The disclosed aspects relate generally to communications between devices and specifically to methods and systems for improving mechanisms for prompting a Near Field Communication (NFC) controller (NFCC) to update data exchange parameters for international standards organization data exchange protocol (ISO-DEP) communications between a device host (DH) and a remote NFC endpoint.
Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Many such cellular telephones are manufactured with ever increasing computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs. Further, such devices are enabling communications using a variety of frequencies and applicable coverage areas, such as cellular communications, wireless local area network (WLAN) communications, NFC, etc.
When NFC is implemented, a NFC enabled device may initially detect a NFC tag and/or target device. Thereafter, communications between NFC devices may use an ISO-DEP. The present draft of the NFC Forum Controller Interface (NCI) specification does not address all functionality required to use the ISO-DEP.
At present, NCI defines two RF Interfaces that a device may use when communicating using ISO-DEP RF Protocol: ISO-DEP and Frame. If the NFC Controller is relatively sophisticated, it may be able to handle the ISO-DEP protocol, and ISO-DEP RF Interface may be used, reducing the processing load on the Device Host. If the NFC Controller is less capable and/or has a known bug, Frame RF Interface can be used. In such an implementation, the NFC Controller merely passes protocol activation, data, and protocol deactivation messages on to the Device Host for processing. Currently, when activating ISO-DEP using Frame RF Interface over NFC-B RF Technology, there are parameters in the activation command and response (ATTRIB command and ATTRIB response) that are needed by the NFC Controller, but since the NFC Controller merely passes on the data to the DH the specification does not provide a mechanism for the NFCC to learn these values.
Thus, improved apparatus and methods for providing improved mechanisms for updating data exchange parameters for ISO-DEP communication between a DH and a remote NFC endpoint using interfaces such as a frame RF interface and an ISO-DEP RF protocol may be desired.